As a tenant in the Federal Building at 909 First Avenue in Seattle, WA, the National Park Service (NPS) developed an innovative practice to purchase Berkeley Lamps and Wattstopper Isolet units for each private office and cubicle workspace. The historic Federal Building has 1930’s style architecture and uses daylighting and modern energy efficient lamps, fixtures and controls. When tasked to upgrade T-12 fluorescent fixture in drop down ceilings, the common practice is to retrofit to T-8 technology. The NPS developed the idea to leave the T-12 fixtures in place and purchase Berkeley Lamps for offices and cubicles. The NPS determined that the lamps could provide even greater energy savings through reduced waste, cost, and improved indoor air quality.
The Berkeley Lamp, developed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, contains two separate compact fluorescent lamps for upward and downward illumination with dimmer controls. By purchasing 80 lamps the NPS was able to:
- Reduce the total job cost by an estimated 80 percent
- Avoid solid waste disposal of 450 fixtures, 900 lamps, 450 ballasts, and a large number of broken ceiling panels
- Avoid indoor air quality problems caused by disruption of the sealed plenum and any required painting
- Avoid future overhead fixture repositioning when rearranging office configurations because lamp moves with workspace
- Empower employees to control individual office illumination levels
- Convert lighting choice from having large banks of lights on, to having only individual cubicle illuminated as necessary
- Allow better use of daylighting resource
- Achieve additional energy savings by providing the ability to turn off lamp and other electrical devices controlled by occupancy sensor power strip
For more information, contact Mr. Stephen E. Butterworth at (206) 220-4277 or via e-mail at steve_butterworth@nps.gov
